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Collective rotations are common in active matter, enhancing cohesion, transport, and mixing. They are typically attributed to chiral non-reciprocal dynamics due to intrinsic particle chirality, torque-generating interactions among units, or…
Cracking the whip accelerates the tail of a chain to hit the air loudly and clearly. We proved that the similar acceleration effect causes coil deformation of driven chain-like polymers. We first preformed Monte Carlo simulations of a…
Experiments have shown that self-propelled particles can slide along the surface of a circular obstacle without becoming trapped over long times. Using simulations and theory, we study the impact of boundary conditions on the diffusive…
Using contact dynamics simulations, we compare the effect of rolling resistance at the contacts in granular systems composed of disks with the effect of angularity in granular systems composed of regular polygonal particles. In simple shear…
Using a tight-binding atomistic simulation, we simulate the recent atomic-force microscopy experiments probing the slipperiness of graphene flakes made slide against a graphite surface. Compared to previous theoretical models, where the…
Recent work on the dynamics of monolayers on a metallic substrate attached to a quartz oscillator has provided interesting data on kinetic friction at the microscopic level. Sliding of the film relative to the substrate is often observed…
Magnetic nanoparticles are useful in many medical applications because they interact with biology on a cellular level thus allowing microenvironmental investigation. An enhanced understanding of the dynamics of magnetic particles may lead…
Some of the main experimental observations related to the occurrence of exchange bias in magnetic systems are reviewed, focusing the attention on the peculiar phenomenology associated to nanoparticles with core/shell structure as compared…
Ring polymers are prevalent in natural and engineered systems, including circular bacterial DNA, crown ethers for cation chelation, and mechanical nanoswitches. The morphology and dynamics of ring polymers are governed by the chemistry and…
The loss of information about the relative phase between two quantum states, known as decoherence, strongly limits resolution in electron paramagnetic spectroscopy and hampers the use of molecules for quantum information processing. At low…
Numerous soft materials jam into an amorphous solid at high packing fraction. This non-equilibrium phase transition is best understood in the context of a model system in which particles repel elastically when they overlap. Recently,…
We investigate dynamical stability of a single propeller-like shaped molecular cogwheel modelled as the fixed-axis rigid rotator. In the realistic situations, rotation of the finite-size cogwheel is subject of the envi- ronmentally-induced…
We introduce a model of friction between two contacting (stationary or co-sliding) rough surfaces, each comprising a random ensemble of polydisperse hemispherical bumps. In the simplest version of the model, the bumps experience on contact…
This paper examines friction as a function of the sliding velocity and applied normal load from air to UHV in a scanning force microscope (SFM) experiment in which a sharp silicon tip slides against a flat Si(100) sample. Under ambient…
The effects of a displacive structural phase transition on sliding friction are in principle accessible to nanoscale tools such as the Atomic Force Microscopy, yet they are still surprisingly unexplored. We present model simulations…
We present a novel mechanism for resolving the mechanical rigidity of nanoscopic circular polymers that flow in a complex environment. The emergence of a regime of negative differential mobility induced by topological interactions between…
Molecular dynamics simulation have shown that after initial surface melting, nanowires can melt via two mechanisms: an interface front moves towards the wire centre; the growth of an instability at the interface can cause the solid to…
Much work has studied effective interactions between micron-sized particles carrying linkers forming reversible, inter-particle linkages. These studies allowed understanding the equilibrium properties of colloids interacting through…
Tension-compression asymmetry is a notable feature of plasticity in bcc single crystals. Recent experiments reveal striking differences in the plasticity of bcc nanopillars for tension and compression. Here we present results from molecular…
We poorly understand the properties of amorphous systems at small length scales, where a continuous elastic description breaks down. This is apparent when one considers their vibrational and transport properties, or the way forces propagate…